BBC could force more OAPs to pay licence fee

It will be free to deny perk to elderly middle-class viewers

MIDDLE-CLASS pensioners may have to start paying for their television licence within five years, under new Government plans.

The BBC will have to pick up the £650million-a-year bill for providing free TV licences to the over-75s, the Culture Secretary confirmed yesterday.

However, in a move that could hit millions of middle-class families, it will be allowed to change the rules from 2020.

John Whittingdale said yesterday that the Corporation would take ‘full responsibility for [the] policy’ from 2020, which currently saves the over-75s £145.50 a year. That means it will be at liberty to raise the age at which people are entitled to a free television licence, or to introduce a meanstesting system so that they are only given to poorer pensioners.

He added: ‘Under this agreement, the BBC will take on the cost of providing free television licences for those households over 75 and this will be phased in from 2018/19, with the BBC tak- ing on the full costs from 2020/21.’ The Corporation has fought hard against proposals that it should shoulder the cost of free television licences for the over-75s, amid concerns that it amounts to an effective budget cut of £650m a year.

Five years ago, when the Government last tried to make the BBC take on the extra cost, its former director general, Mark Thompson, and the entire BBC Trust threatened to resign en masse.

More recently, Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television, said it would axe programmes and potentially television and radio channels if it was forced to take on the burden.

The bill is currently paid for by the Department for Work and Pensions.

But the Government made a series of concessions to the BBC yesterday in order to soften the blow.

In addition to assuming control of the rules for free television licences, the BBC will be able to claw back

‘Deeply shocking’

£150m in licence fee income as the Government closes the so- called ‘iPlayer loophole’.

It has been agreed that legislation will be rushed through next year that will force households to pay the licence fee, regardless of whether they watch BBC programmes live or on the iPlayer catch-up service.

Last night the BBC’s director general, Lord Hall, welcomed the deal. He said: ‘We have secured the right deal for the BBC in difficult economic circumstances for the country.

‘This agreement secures the long term funding for a strong BBC over the next Charter period.’

Under the new deal, the Government also agreed to let the BBC off the burden of paying for the roll-out of rural broadband.

The Corporation will have to pay £80m towards the scheme in 2017, but that figure will drop to £20m the following year and will be wiped out altogether by 2020. Mr Whittingdale added that the Government is still considering whether to decriminalise licence fee evasion – a move that is predicted to cost the BBC tens of millions of pounds and which the Corporation has resisted strongly.

However, not everyone was quite as pleased with the agreement. Lord Birt, who was head of the BBC from 1992 to 2000, led a chorus of criticism from peers for the plan.

‘This is a deeply shocking announcement,’ he told the House of Lords. ‘This Government and the last Government have essentially set a very dangerous precedent.’

The Government does not need to make any legislative changes to enforce the change, now that it has already been agreed with the BBC.